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title: "Questions about APC-free models"
layout: post
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I'm here at the Kansas University conference on "Envisioning a world beyond Article/Book Processing Charges". One of the first things we were asked to do was a two-minute lightning talk on what we don't yet know about a world beyond APCs. I thought that I would share my questions here, for posterity:
1. In removing APCs, how do we keep the visibility of labour? Just because there is no author charge does not mean that there is no cost or no necessary remuneration for labour. But it can appear so.
2. Where have APCs come from? It's something to do with a transition from a sales to a service model. But it also subsumes fixed and sunk costs into marginal/unit costs and the latter can mask the former.
3. Do non-classical models have scalability limits?
4. How are those who are doing well out of APCs going to respond? How do we defend our new models?
5. How do non-APC models work within market structures? How do they work within political frameworks and government policies that favour conditions of market competition?